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"One of the biggest affordances of technology is towards the enhancement of the concept of personalized learning. Internet and more particularly web 2.0 technologies and mobile apps have provided learners with unprecedented opportunities to learn whenever, wherever, and however they want. At its core, personalized learning is all about tailoring the available resources in order to meet personal learning needs. On a macro educational scale, personalized learning addresses different teaching strategies and instructional methods that focus on the adjustment and leverage of the curricula and teaching materials to help meet a diverse set of students learning needs and interests."

"Teaching students that intelligence can grow and blossom with effort - rather than being a fixed trait they're just born with - is gaining traction in progressive education circles. And new research from Stanford is helping to build the case that nurturing a "growth mindset" can help many kids understand their true potential. The new research involves larger, more rigorous field trials that provide some of the first evidence that the social psychology strategy can be effective when implemented in schools on a wide scale. Even a one-time, 30-minute online intervention can spur academic gains for many students, particularly those with poor grades. The premise is that these positive effects can stick over years, leading for example to higher graduation rates; but long-term data is still needed to confirm that. "

"Whether you've got a blog, business, or just a large group of people you need to contact, you've probably looked into sending online newsletters. There are a ton of options out there. Most are similarly priced and offer a competitive suite of features. They're reliable, effective, and help you actually reach the people you want. But there's one big problem. They're all expensive. If you grow your subscriber list beyond about 2,500 people, you're going to start paying about $20-$30 per month to start. Once that list hits a couple thousand more people, you're going to be doubling that monthly cost. The sliding (up) scale terrifies me and made me hunt around for a better option. I didn't find one until just a few months ago. And I think Sendy might just be the future of newsletters."

"I am in the process of collating all my notes together to put onto this blog as well as a Multi-Touch book for iBooks. Whilst that that is a working process take a read of my top 5 key notes for a successful 1:1 roll out. I've done  a number different roll outs now both small and large scale, primary and secondary and each time I have been taking notes on the implementations, reflecting on how I would do things differently if I were to do it again. Below are my key notes (no Apple pun intended there) on what I believe makes a successful roll out."

"Figuring out what the future of education is going to look like is downright impossible. Startups have a very difficult time cracking into the education world because many schools either don't have the money or the time to devote to integrating the best edtech tools into the classroom. So what kind of future are we all in store for? While we may not know the future of online learning, we do know that innovation is a constant. Education is a bit resistant to change when it comes to technology and large-scale adoption of innovative products. However, there are some key trends that you should know about as a student or teacher looking to be ahead of the curve."

"Like a slow moving barge, the discussions around teaching students to code have remained afloat, drifting slowly towards a far away destination for many years. Although there is still progress to be made to achieve the goals of code fluency, current activities indicate that significant change is happening and thankfully, on a global scale."

"When smartphones first became popular, the struggle was to shrink Internet Explorer to the size of a playing card. The internet browser was the de facto app installed on every computer-it allowed you to browse the web. For many, the web browser is a computer. (See Google Chromebooks.) It quickly became clear that squeezing desktop actions on handheld technology was backwards. Mobile-first thinking changed things. Facebook became mobile-first-which meant that it's designed to not just be accessed on your phone, but work better on your phone. Websites are often now responsive, scaling to the size of your screen. But more importantly, the software and the hardware are increasingly parallel, with apps working together-iOS's Neato feeding Evernote, for example, location-based alerts, smarter notifications, simpler multitasking, improved voice recognition, fingerprint sensors, predictive notifications based on usage, and more. Today, mobile technology is awful for ambitious word processing, but for everything else it's pretty incredible. Have you seen apps like Brainfeed? A library of engaging content!"

"We usually only learn about the magnitude of an earthquake and the location of the epicenter. This infographic explains how ground waves and depth define the magnitude on the Richter Scale and the amount of destruction that implies. It also illustrates plate boundaries on the globe and the regions where most earthquakes occur. The Earthquakes infographic by Weather Underground also describes hydraulic fracking and how this has increased earthquake activity in places where earthquakes don't naturally occur."

"Reflection could also be described as the 'opposite' of activating prior knowledge. Reflection is functional neurologically (reinforcing learning as a 'memory), but also useful as a practice, helping students understand the scale and value of what they just experienced. Maker Education is no different-in fact, Maker Learning may benefit even more from reflection than more traditional academic experiences due to the fail-forward/try-again persistence required by this approach. (Check out our Maker Education resources for more reading.) Jackie Gerstein is one of our favorites here at TeachThought, and her usergeneratededucation site is a must-bookmark for all teachers. So, on to the questions for reflection in Maker Learning. Below, Jackie has written 23 possible reflection questions to get you started. Share any others you'd recommend in the comments."

"Remember the hype around gamification? About a decade ago, FarmVille and other Facebook games were all the rage. It led the Horizon Report, an annual attempt by a panel of experts to forecast educational trends, to predict in 2012 that gamification would be a major force in education within three years. But here we are in 2019, and people aren't talking much about gamification in education. In fact, after 2015, the Horizon Report stopped mentioning it at all. This week Educause released the higher education edition of the Horizon Report for 2019, and for the first time it looked back on how well past reports did at accurately predicting what would be on the horizon. Titled "Fail or Scale," the new section of the report includes three essays that look back at three predictions from past reports with the benefit of hindsight."

"After seeing these hands-on blocks I thought it would be great if anyone could make their own.  So I set about creating some vector versions of the standard Scratch blocks that could be scaled to any size required.  As I created them I also thought how useful it would be if Teachers could use them in other ways, for example, displays, PowerPoints and on Interactive Whiteboards."

"Truth Decay - the diminishing role that facts, data, and analysis play in political and civil discourse - appears to result, in part, from an increasingly complex information ecosystem. Technology, in particular, offers continual access to information of varying quality and credibility, information that can blur the line between fact-based evidence and opinion. Not everyone is equipped with the skills necessary to navigate such uncertain terrain. The purpose of this report is to describe the field of media literacy (ML) education and the ways in which ML education can counter Truth Decay by changing how participants consume, create, and share information. One limitation of this research base arises from the variety of ways that literature defines and measures ML outcomes; while a multiplicity of viewpoints can be beneficial, it also presents challenges in terms of aggregating findings across studies. Despite this, the authors describe existing evidence that ML could be a useful tool for combating Truth Decay. They also provide an inventory of ML offerings available to the public. Finally, the authors make suggestions for moving forward, with the specific recommendation that professionals in ML and related fields strengthen their communication and collaboration, considering where there are opportunities for a common approach to researching ML. The authors recommend that policymakers and practitioners increase participation from diverse constituencies in scaling ML efforts"

"The spread of online misinformation poses serious challenges to societies worldwide. In a novel attempt to address this issue, we designed a psychological intervention in the form of an online browser game. In the game, players take on the role of a fake news producer and learn to master six documented techniques commonly used in the production of misinformation: polarisation, invoking emotions, spreading conspiracy theories, trolling people online, deflecting blame, and impersonating fake accounts. The game draws on an inoculation metaphor, where preemptively exposing, warning, and familiarising people with the strategies used in the production of fake news helps confer cognitive immunity when exposed to real misinformation. We conducted a large-scale evaluation of the game with N = 15,000 participants in a pre-post gameplay design. We provide initial evidence that people's ability to spot and resist misinformation improves after gameplay, irrespective of education, age, political ideology, and cognitive style."

"What if you could squeeze an extra ten minutes out of your busy day and devote them to more meaningful interactions with students, colleagues and parents? While a school day is estimated to be around 6.7 hours, every educator knows that a teacher's workday is much longer. Carving out extra time in a teaching day may seem like a tall order for many educators, who often must steal hours from their evenings, cutting into their own professional development time and tipping the scales on their work-life balance. While a school day is estimated to be around 6.7 hours, every educator knows that a teacher's workday is much longer. Add the time required for all the other parts of the job-lesson planning, providing students extra support, grading, and parent and staff meetings-and teachers can expect to put in a 12- to 16-hour workday. Recent advancements in data analytics and artificial intelligence, however, may help teachers gain back some of those hours. These technologies offer new efficiencies and insights into classroom learning, allowing educators to harness the power of data from their learning management systems (LMSs) and freeing them up to focus their time on activities that truly lead to better learning outcomes."

"Architectural Design is not a subject normally taught in schools. Because it presents something of a novelty to children, it often produces some very creative and exciting results. Furzedown Primary School in South West London regularly hold a sequence of lessons in its summer term focusing on this with a Year 5 class. The process starts looking at structure and continues with spacial design, materials, drawing techniques followed by model making. The children are normally given a brief and asked to design a pavilion. To conclude the sequence of lessons, a selection of projects is chosen to build full scale."

"3D printing has been used to build houses, cabins, offices, bridges, pavilions, large-scale structures, and much more. Even though they only existed for a handful of years, there are a vast number of completed projects, ongoing construction jobs, and unique concepts that are driving the industry today. Before we get started with the greatest 3D printed houses and structures in the world, take a glance at the top five advantages that 3D printing can offer the construction industry."

"I asked my students to give reading a chance this year.  I promised them that if they liked reading, I would do my very best to protect that love.  That if they disliked it, or even hated it, I would try to create an experience that would perhaps change their perception even a little bit. I polled them at the beginning of the year and was frankly horrified at what I found.  Out of 130 students, 53.6% of students reported that on a scale from 1 to 10, reading was a 4 or less.  That's 70 students. 70 students that despite their previous teachers best intentions have already decided that reading is really not for them.  Out of those 70 students, 35 students reported that they hated it.  Hated it.  Not just dislike.    But hate. So what do you when you are faced with such insurmountable odds?  What program do you lean on?  What curriculum do you implement? For us; none. It turns out it is much simpler than following a curriculum. What made the biggest difference to all of my reading hating students?"

"Computer programming, otherwise known as coding, is currently offered in a small fraction of US K-12 schools. There has been a push to change this recently, as evidenced by several White House initiatives, the heavily publicized Hour of Code program, and recent large scale adoptions of hands on STEM programs such as Project Lead the Way. Serious challenges remain. Many schools find themselves ill-equipped to set up coding for schools programs, citing reasons such as insufficient human capital, out-of-date equipment, and high speed internet issues. Setting up effective coding programs at schools can be challenging, and there as many issues to consider including curriculum selection, staffing, professional development, and funding. One fundamental issue dogs nearly every program implementation. Trained engineers with coding backgrounds are needed to provide the level of rigor needed to support high quality computer programming courses. It is hard enough to find skilled engineers to handle private sector demand, and even more challenging to find those with in teaching. In this guide, we provide teachers and administrators with guidance on how to set up effective K-12 computer programming courses, whether they be comprehensive STEM curriculum implementations, daytime classes or after school clubs."

"Technology is changing the world at a rapid pace, and education isn't exempt from the effects of that. Social media, in particular, is one of the greatest influences of our time - not just on young people, but on culture in general - encouraging social connections and enabling the exchange of thoughts and information on a global scale. And although it has its drawbacks (peer pressure, bullying, access to questionable content, and its addictive nature, to name a few), there are also tremendous benefits when it comes to social networks - and let's face it, they're not going anywhere."

I recently spent ten days in Cambodia accompanying students on a service trip where they developed their cultural understanding and spent time improving the environment of a local school. While laying pavers and digging a ditch I had a chance to reflect on the difficulties facing education in a country like this. I came away with questions, wondering and few answers.